Gas ranges or stoves have burners located on the stove top and individual knobs for the burners mounted on the stove front. The knobs are normally at a height that render them readily reachable and accessible by small children. Without knowing the consequences of such wrongdoing, the child may turn a knob. Either the associated burner would be turned on or gas would continuously flow without burning. The result could be an explosion, fire, loss of property or life and serious burns or injury.
A number of attempts have been made to rectify this problem by the use of control mechanism of different types. Some are disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 2,413,237, 2,808,497, 2,926,656, 3,176,754 and 5,400,766. However, a majority of these control mechanisms required changes or modification of the original gas ranges or stoves which is a disadvantage for the original equipment manufacturer or costly for the consumer to install these mechanisms.